Sally Kohn is a lesbian and she wants her daughter to be a lesbian, too. That’s a provocative position to take, but her reasoning deserves a hearing.
She makes some good points, especially as rebuttals to the argument that parents shouldn’t want life to be harder for their children than it has to be. She points out that it’s easier to make a living as a dentist than an artist, but she’d never discourage her daughter from being an artist. She says that if she were living in North Carolina and adopted a Moroccan boy, she’d encourage him to be a Muslim if that’s what he wanted to be, despite the fact that it would probably be easier for him not to be a Muslim.
These examples aren’t perfect, however, because she isn’t saying that she’d support her daughter if she is gay but that she actively desires that her daughter will be gay. And it can get a bit weird.
When my daughter plays house with her stuffed koala bears as the mom and dad, we gently remind her that they could be a dad and dad. Sometimes she changes her narrative. Sometimes she doesn’t. It’s her choice.
Kohn is kind of inviting us to judge her parenting approach, but I’m still resistant to engage in that kind of analysis.
What’s key to her argument is that things won’t be equal for gays and lesbians so long as there is the presumption that heterosexuality is easier and preferable. So, she is not going to perpetuate those mindsets.
I’m pretty open-minded about these things, and I certainly understand her sincere wish that her daughter will be as much like her as possible. But it’s at least an open question whether her honesty isn’t just a gloss for her consciousness of guilt:
Time will tell, but so far, it doesn’t look like my 6-year-old daughter is gay. In fact, she’s boy crazy. It seems early to me, but I’m trying to be supportive. Recently, she had a crush on an older boy on her school bus. She was acting as any precocious, socially awkward child would, which is to say not very subtle. I confided in a friend who has an older daughter. “She wants to give this kid a card and presents,” I e-mailed. “The other kid is so embarrassed. It’s painful to watch. What do I do?”
My friend wrote back with a slew of helpful advice, ending with a punch to my gut: “Bet it wouldn’t bother you so much if her crush was on a girl.”
She was right. I’m a slightly overbearing pro-gay gay mom. But I’m going to support my daughter, whatever choices she makes.
Yes, she’s self-aware, which is good. It bothers her that her daughter likes boys. Maybe it bothers her in the same way that it bothers a father that his son is not interested in sports. She’d be happier if her girl was someone other than who she is. Sure, she’ll tolerate her choices and be supportive of her decisions, but isn’t this the kind of half-hearted support Kohn disparages in those who tolerate and support their gay children?
Okay, so she’s normal. There’s nothing to apologize for in that, but she’s also not being exemplary here.
The hard thing is to not care, I guess, whether your kid becomes a rich dentist, a starving artist, or what their sexual preference turns out to be.
Not too many parents can meet that test, and certainly not Sally Kohn.
Agree. With you.
Kohn might want to be more careful in speaking of choices:
The implication of that statement is that being gay or heterosexual is a choice. That’s not PC nor supported by research.
She did seem to be straddling that fence without explicitly falling over either side of it.
Well, for a good percentage, namely bisexuals, it IS a choice. In the LGBT community there are more than twice as many male homosexuals (38%) than female homosexuals(19%). There are more bisexual women than there are lesbians (29% to 18%).
Sexuality is complicated. There are some people who can’t imagine a same sex relationship. There are some can’t imagine an opposite sex relationship.
And there are all sorts of gradations in between.
I know several people who through the years switched teams. I know a gay woman who after decades married a guy. I know of women who have left their marriages and become gay. There is a great book about sexual fluidity in women. For some women it is a political choice. For others it is who they happened to fall in love with.
Until recently all of this was suppressed – Same Sex relationships were forbidden. As the taboo is lifted we will, I suspect, find this is far more complicated than we think. Yes, genetics plays a part, and for many it is dispostive. But for others it isn’t, and for others genetics itself may change orientation
This PC shit serves at its worst to seek to promote ideology over reality.
The mother wants her child to be like her. I want my children to be like me, straight. The mother probably is well aware that for LGBT women it is more of a choice than it is for men, or if not a choice subject to variation.
There isn’t a fucking thing wrong with what she said. I guess we are all supposed to be shocked – but when to take a step back you realize how natural what she said is.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/06/13/a-survey-of-lgbt-americans/
There’s one fucking thing wrong with it, which is that she’s sexualizing her kid; or projecting adult sexuality on her kid, or some shit like that. I remind my son that parents can both be male, or both be female, because I try to teach him that the world is more complex than he sees. He just took a girl’s part in a school play and went to school for a week with his hair dyed pink. I’ve painted his nails. Whatever. He’s 7. The idea that I’m thinking (and dreaming and strategizing) now about where he’s gonna want to put his tinky-wink in six years is fucking weird. At some point, maybe I’ll have stronger feeling about it, I don’t know, but he’s 7. For me, right now, to be dwelling on the possibilities of his eventual adult sexuality is skin-crawlingly inappropriate.
I like taking a consensual riding crop to my wife, but I’m not hoping he’s into that shit. Not because there’s anything wrong with it. BECAUSE HE’S SEVEN.
(And yeah, I feel the same way about parents who are heavily invested in their kids being straight. Get out of your little kids’ pants.)
I could never fault a basically carrying, conscientious parent for being less than perfect.
the kid is what the kid is….
leave it be
http://36.media.tumblr.com/446c863cc72cfbf5f2dc9b57884825b2/tumblr_n0hce9Gloo1rj9tv2o1_1280.png
http://41.media.tumblr.com/f6e1a5d527078f54ccc82a273aeaeaf3/tumblr_n0hce9Gloo1rj9tv2o2_500.png
http://41.media.tumblr.com/991a62b0bbfc365caca142c0fb691c50/tumblr_n0hce9Gloo1rj9tv2o3_1280.png
You REALLY want to get into it?
Jimmy Hatlo had a phrase for that.
Psychologizing and looking for heroes is one of the traps of America’s overemphasis on hyperindividualism and “individual responsibility”.
She’s normal. Period. But the rest of the world makes a big deal of it because she’s a lesbian. Parents in the US need to stop striving to be perfect.
The important task right now is to end discrimination against those who manifest the multiplicity of forms of gender. And that gets really strange. Here’s the latest review of the science:
Clair Ainsworth, Nature: Sex redefined: The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.
Yes, particularly considering that as we’re all flawed, parental perfection is impossible. This latest iteration of “perfect parents” seems to be leading to a generation of overvalued, overprotected, and stressed out kids. Will be a while before some good research is done on overvalued kids — neglected in the past because there weren’t enough subjects. I’ve only known one person that seemed to have been overvalued and overprotected as a child. Decent enough, professionally marginal, and extremely boring.
wrt biologists now thinking that there’s a wider spectrum of human sexuality, that’s been obvious to anyone that didn’t or doesn’t see beyond a heterosexual normative box.
What is very interesting about that article is the different levels of biological cross-cutting phenomena and the fact that the research has not yet been connected with consciousness, behavior, and so on–that is, the language that laypeople generally use to talk about gender and sexuality.
A generation of kids protected from everything but their parents’ anxieties (which are contagious).
I was over valued over protected and stressed out about it as a child.
My advantages were that tech wasn’t as pervasive and I was constantly fighting it.
Kohn’s position is only provocative if you believe that parents can or should influence their child’s sexual orientation.
Just as long as my kid isn’t a wingnut.
Ideally parents want their children to be happy, whatever that looks like. I see no difference between wanting your kid to grow up a Lesbian, and wanting your kid to grow up a heterosexual. Ultimately, what we want as parents doesn’t matter. The children will grow up to be whatever they are regardless of our wishes. It’s our job to be accepting of who they are at all stages of their lives.
Wanting our kids to be like us is normal. Demanding that they be like us is wrong. Ultimately it is the child as possession.
I want my kids to be happy, healthy, and safe. I have no idea what that will look like from society’s point of view in the future, and no idea what will work best for each child. So I simply stick to happy, healthy, and safe.
Happy and healthy are often not possible because they conflict. Kids are really happy living on a diet of junk food. Healthy not so much. The list of what makes kids happy that is not either healthy or safe is very long.
t he idea that you can determine, or even substantially influence your child’s sexual orientation is fucking hilarious
… if she wanted her adopted daughter to be gay. She immediately said: “I want her to be happy.”
I think that is the correct answer. My sister is a great mom.
_________
Only if his folly predominated.
History…and “wisdom,” at least as it is commonly perceived…is written by the winners. Had Hitler won WWII, he’d be widely and generally considered “wise” and his opponents would be the evil fools.
Just sayin’…
AG
Booman…
Do you want your child to be a “progressive?” Betcha. Are you teaching him…implicitly, explicitly and every other “(
x)plicity” that you can name…to be a good progressive? Betcha twice.Same same here.
What’s that you say?
Homosexuailty is largely genetically determined?
Oh.
So is intelligence.
You say over and over again here that non-progressives or anti-progessives are generally somehow stupider than so-called “enlightened” progressives.
Nature or nurture?
Hmmmm…
Maybe it’s when nurture follows nature that things really take root.
Betcha her daughter doesn’t do well with men long-term, given her nurture combined with her genetics. Betcha your son has problems with conservatives, too.
And so it goes. On and on and on and on and on…
Where it stops, nobody knows. Everybody is wrong to somebody. That’s what wars are made of.
Fuss on.
AG